New probe into German ex-terrorist over interview remarks

Oct 20, 2007, 11:37 GMT

Berlin - German prosecutors said Saturday they are investigating a former terrorist over an interview he gave about a spectacular kidnapping and murder he was involved in 30 years ago.

Rolf Clemens Wagner is under investigation for defending the Red Army Faction's (RAF) September 1977 abduction of Hanns Martin Schelyer, head of West Germany's powerful employers organization.

'From today's perspective,' the kidnapping was justified, Wagner told the newspaper Junge Welt this week.

His comments provoked outrage and led to a number of private individuals filing criminal complaints.

A spokeswoman for the Berlin prosecutor's office said it was looking into whether Wagner's remarks constituted the offence of 'endorsing criminal actions.'

Wagner, 63, spent 24 years in prison for his role in the Schleyer kidnapping during which three of the businessman's police bodyguards were shot dead. He was released in 2003 after a presidential pardon.

The abduction triggered a series of events known as the German Autumn which culminated in a Lufthansa plane hijack, the prison suicides of three RAF leaders and Schleyer's murder after 43 days in captivity.

The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, waged an urban war against the West German state that left 30 people dead. The group dissolved itself in April 1998.